Salt Fork Run White Trail Loop

Yowza! I was hoping the elevation JPEG would come out a bit bigger. For a short trail run, this kind of kicked my butt!!

I parked at this little parking lot, below the Salt Fork Lodge. I was originally planing on parking at the Sugar Tree Marina lot, but for some reason there was a “road closed” sign across the road. Since these trails were right in front on me, I decided to start with them. The Pine Crest Loop was first. It’s a nice gentle 1 mile loop. Going out is a bit rooty, on the flip side it’s a big rocky. Garmin had me right at 0.99 miles and I started out on the Morgan’s Knob Loop Trail. Nice single track, ran past some big huge rocks. This hugs the shore line of Salt Fork Lake. More tree graffiti. I do find this interesting, even though I cannot condone maiming the tree like this. I came up to this intersection. I decided to go stage right onto the yellow blazed trail, as I believed the opposite way would just take me back to the car. This yellow blazed trail ends up a big hill, rather abruptly. If you can’t tell, the trail ends here. Behind the trail, on the next hill top over, is the Lodge. Of course, I noticed the trail continuing down the hill, so I followed it. It kind of became a deer trail. I went to the right, hoping to hit the white blazed trail, but when I couldn’t find it, I hiked back up to the top of the hill, ran down it, and took the intersection on the white blazed bridle trail. I had no idea how far the loop would go. I knew it was a loop, and we would have to get close to the Sugar Tree Marina and cross Park Road 67. The bridle trail wasn’t as “nice” as the non-horse, hiking trails had been. There were some ruts, but mainly, the trail was covered in leaves. At first it was fun to be in leaves up to my mid calves in places. But with the leaves so deep, it was slick trying to climb the hills! This was a good challenging loop! Nice to find new trails!